Sex / Pornography Addiction Support Group

Boundary work is the core of Pia Mellody's model and is superbly detailed in her book "The Intimacy Factor."
However, I find that further work on boundaries with a good therapist can help us work through the five core symptoms of relational trauma:

1) Appropriate self esteem
2) Functional Boundaries
3) Owning one's (emotional) reality
4) Appropriately taking care of needs and wants
5) appropriate spontaneity

Working on these core issues is what gets us to the point that we function as adults rather than having the emotional maturity of a 12 year old (as most addicts have). The focus needs to be on boundaries as healing of the other core symptoms requires functional boundaries. For example, as our boundaries become functional we stop being doormats and that improves our self esteem. As our self esteem improves, we see ourselves more and amore as who we really are and that helps us own our reality. When we use our boundaries to protect ourselves from abuse we are taking care of an important need we used to lack.

So therapy for all the symptoms results in integration. The process is also known as reparenting, we are teaching ourselves the things we should have learned by the time we were 8 years old (as John Bradshaw puts it.)

There are five basic boundaries: Physical, Sexual, Emotional, Spiritual, Intellectual. Each boundary is divided into protective (protects us from others) and containment (protects others form ourselves) The Physical and Sexual Boundaries are fairly straight forward I will leave that out from this post. The rest of the boundaries can be classified into listening and talking boundaries.

When we set up our talking boundaries, we are careful not to violate another person's boundary. We remind ourselves that the reason we are talking is to let ourselves BE KNOWN. We are not sending information to blame or manipulate. It helps to use "I" statements throughout the process. Every time we use the word "you," we risk the other person shutting down because they may shift their attention to formulation their defense. Her are the basic steps when exercising appropriate talking boundaries:

1. Remind yourself you are talking to be known, ask if it is a good time to talk.
2. Remind yourself not to blame
3. State the facts (When you come home from work you watch television until bedtime)
4. State what you make up about the facts (What I make up about that is that you have a wall and that I am unimportant)
5. State how you feel (About that I feel lonely, uncared for, and hurt)
6. State what you decided to do (and I decided to talk to you about it)
7. Propose a change if any ( and I ask that you limit your tv viewing to 1 hour and then that we spend 30 minutes talking about our day)

The listening boundary is similar for the receiver:

1. Remind yourself not to take blame
2. Remind yourself you are listening to know the other person, not to formulate your defense
3. Regulate your emotions through breath work
4. Review what the other person is saying and ask yourself if the information is true for you. If it is, let yourself have feelings about it, even they are painful.
5. If the information is not true for you, then detach from feeling emotions about what is being said. Tell yourself that the information is about the other person. For example, some one calls me stupid; I know I'm not stupid. What this tells me is that the other person has no containment boundary and probably comes from a dysfunctional family.
6. If what your are hearing is questionable, hold off on having feelings and ask for clarification.
7. If you sense a boundary violation, stand up for yourself and ask the person to stop. This does not mean retaliation.
8. Negotiate if necessary.

Next, it is important to recognize when boundaries are being violated. It is recommended that this set of violations be memorized by anyone working on boundaries. The following boundary violations work both ways:

1. Don't imply BY WORD OR DEED that someone else is worth less. (Don't go 1-up)
2. Don't yell or scream at someone
3. Don't ridicule another person
4. Don't call someone names
5. Don't lie
6. Don't attempt to control or manipulate
7. Don't use sarcasm when being intimate
8. Don't break a commitment for no reason
9. Don't interrupt.

In addition, it helps to not play the blame game. Don't blame others for:
What is going on in your body
what you are thinking
what you are feeling
the choices you make

In the absence of a boundary violation, any feelings, thoughts, etc are because of some internal process within ourselves and we must resist blaming others for this.

Enough information. I would encourage anyone needing work on boundaries to read Pia's book.

Respectfully,

Soberone